SINCERELY, VALENTINES – FROM POSTCARDS TO GREETINGS CARDS, V&A DUNDEE, 2022-2023
Founded in Dundee in 1851, Valentine and Sons is best known for popularising the picture postcard. In the early 20th century Valentines capitalised on technological developments in photography and printing to meet the demand of the UK’s growing tourism industry. Valentines swiftly became one of Dundee’s largest employers until it ceased trading in 1994. The company created an enormous body of work and remains an enduring legacy in Dundee’s economic history.
Central to the exhibition are seven oversized postcard photomontages designed by Maeve Redmond. These are created from images held in the vast Valentines archive at the University of St Andrews. These works highlight the crucial contribution that the company’s workers made to Dundee’s social, cultural and industrial heritage. These are presented together with a documentary film by artist and exhibition designer Rob Kennedy. Produced in collaboration with design curators Panel.
Photography by Julie Howden
THE MATHEMATICAL RIVER, EDINBURGH ART FESTIVAL, 2022
The Mathematical River was commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival’s associate artist Emmie McLuskey for the curatorial programme Channels (2022), which focuses on the 200th anniversary of the Union Canal that runs from Falkirk in central Scotland to Edinburgh’s Lochrin Basin.
The mural work honours the unsung labour of the “navvies” who built the canal, a monumental feat of engineering that has remained a key feature of Edinburgh for centuries. In collaboration with traditional sign painter Tatch Robertson (Journeyman Signs), The Mathematical River was created as a site-specific installation on the canal’s Leamington Lift Bridge. The vernacular style of the mural recalls the canal boats and brewery carts that plied the canal’s length and simultaneously celebrates the sign painter’s craft as an intrinsic, historic part of the urban environment.
Photography by Sally Jubb
A CANAL’S PAST COMING TO LIFE, EDINBURGH ART FESTIVAL, 2022
A companion piece to The Mathematical River, commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival for associate artist Emmie McLuskey’s curatorial programme Channels, 2022. Created in collaboration with traditional sign painter Tatch Robertson (Journeyman Signs), the mural uses headlines from historical press clippings, derived from primary source research, which describe the various social perceptions of the Union Canal throughout its 200-year history.
Photography by Sally Jubb
PLAIN AND ORNAMENTAL OF EVERY DESCRIPTION, V&A DUNDEE, 2018-2022
This large-scale installation explores the wider context that surrounds a 19th century trade catalogue by cast-iron manufacturers W MacFarlane & Co Ltd, also known as the Saracen Foundry, and demonstrates the international impact of Scottish industrial design.
The MacFarlane company established their foundry in Possilpark, Glasgow, in 1871 and soon became the leading manufacturer of ornamental ironwork in Britain and abroad. MacFarlane’s designs were exported across imperial Britain’s colonies, where its balustrades, bandstands and gates can be found to this day. The company’s legacy is inextricably connected to civic displays of empire and economic dominance. The installation was exhibited in the V&A Dundee’s Scottish Design Gallery from September 2018 until June 2022.
Q&A with Maeve Redmond on the V&A Dundee website
Photography by Ruth Clark
THE MIRACULOUS, EDINBURGH SCULPTURE WORKSHOP, 2016
The Miraculous re-presents excerpts from artist and academic Raphael Rubinstein’s 2014 book of the same name throughout the corridors, communal spaces and exterior surfaces of the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop complex.
Short text pieces described works by contemporary artists spanning the last five decades of the 20th century, dispersed throughout the building and grounds. Presented without accreditation to the original artists, the excerpts are re-contextualised as a kaleidoscope of conceptual artistic practice and meaning within the complex. Designed in collaboration with Sophie Dyer. Commissioned by Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. Exhibited from 4 June until 24 September 2016.
Read a review of the exhibition from Art in America here
Photography by Graeme Yule
THE PERSISTENCE OF TYPE, TRAMWAY, 2015
The Persistence of Type is an ongoing collaborative project by design curators Panel (Catriona Duffy and Lucy McEachan), designer Sophie Dyer, writer and academic Fiona Jardine and Maeve Redmond. The project interrogates gender performance and subjectivity in cultural production through the intersecting lenses of fashion, media and graphic design.
The Persistence of Type’s first edition comprised an exhibition of new graphic work and a billboard installation by designers Maeve Redmond and Sophie Dyer, and a distributed newspaper and events programme with newly commissioned work by writers and researchers Fiona Jardine, Anna McLauchlan and Mairi MacKenzie. The programme was produced by design curators Panel and exhibited at Tramway, Glasgow, from 20 June until 9 August 2015.
Download the The Persistence of Type vol.I newspaper
Photography by Kevin Hunter and Gordon Burniston
THE PERSISTENCE OF TYPE VOL. I, PANEL/TRAMWAY, 2015
Print design and publication for the first edition of The Persistence of Type, an ongoing collaborative project by design curators Panel (Catriona Duffy and Lucy McEachan), designer Sophie Dyer, writer and academic Fiona Jardine and Maeve Redmond.
The Persistence of Type exhibition was presented at Tramway, Glasgow, and featured graphic work by Maeve Redmond and Sophie Dyer, an off-site billboard work, and talks by academics and researchers Mairi MacKenzie and Anna McLauchlan, as well as a presentation of filmmaker Harun Farocki’s 1986 film Catch Phrase, Catch Images.
Photography: Sophie Dyer
THE PERSISTENCE OF TYPE VOL. II, PANEL/GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL, 2016
Print design and publication for the second edition of The Persistence of Type, an ongoing collaborative project by design curators Panel (Catriona Duffy and Lucy McEachan), designer Sophie Dyer, writer and academic Fiona Jardine and Maeve Redmond.
The Persistence of Type Vol. II showcases commissioned texts and work from the artists, writers and designers Mary Dunbar, Maria Fusco, Georgia Horgan, Mairi MacKenzie, Anna McLauchlan, Neil McGuire, Mhari McMullan, and Lili Reynaud-Dewar, as well as work by Maeve Redmond and Sophie Dyer previously presented for the 2015 exhibition The Persistence of Type at Tramway, Glasgow. The Persistence of Type’s second volume was published for the seventh edition of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, 2016.
Download the The Persistence of Type vol.II newspaper
Photography by Gordon Burniston
THE PERSISTENCE OF TYPE VOL. III, PANEL/GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL, 2018
Print design and publication for the third edition of The Persistence of Type, an ongoing collaborative project by design curators Panel (Catriona Duffy and Lucy McEachan), designer Sophie Dyer, writer and academic Fiona Jardine and Maeve Redmond. Created for the eighth edition of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, The Persistence of Type Vol. III includes contributions from the artists and writers Catalina Barroso-Luque, Sam Bellacosa, Claire Biddles, Theresa Coburn, Alan Dimmick, Fiona Jardine, Jade Halbert, Mairi MacKenzie and Soulfood Sisters. The newspaper was distributed at Glasgow International venues alongside a special panel discussion hosted by Claire Biddles.
Download The Persistence of Type vol.III newspaper
Photography by Gordon Burniston and Alan Dimmick
BARRIE GIRLS, THE BRIGGAIT, 2013
Barrie Girls comprised an exhibition of six poster designs by designers Maeve Redmond and Sophie Dyer and the commissioned text Ceci N’est Pas Une Photo by writer and academic Fiona Jardine. The exhibition drew on the photographic archive and legacy of the Barrie knitwear company, established in 1903 in Hawick, Scottish Borders. Rapid deindustrialisation of the Scottish Borders’ textile industry in the latter 20th century led Chanel to purchase the Barrie company outright in 2012 to continue production of high-end knitwear under contract.
Historical images from the 1970s and 1980s of Barrie’s female employees, who model the company’s garments, were used by Redmond, Dyer and Jardine for the poster designs and commissioned text, as part of a wider investigation of femininity, fashion, women’s labour and historical memory. The exhibition was produced by design curators Panel for the Merchant City Festival programme and held at The Briggait, Glasgow, from 26-28 July 2013.
Photography by Gordon Burniston